The inventive subject matter disclosed herein is directed to an ergonomic anatomical assist system for mounting on a handled device that is lifted and manipulated using hand and arm. The inventive subject matter provides for a hand grip and forearm support for securely gripping handled devices, such as fryer baskets, pasta bins, pans, fishing nets, dust pans, etc., while also reducing stress on the hand, wrist, and forearm.
For illustrative purposes, the inventive subject matter is described below referring to a handled receptacle device, such as a fryer pan or deep-fryer basket. However, a handled receptacle device may refer to anything that has a handle for lifting or tilting by hand and arm and has a receptacle end attached to the handle for holding something or manipulating something, for example, fly bins, strainers, pots, pans, spoons, ladles, spatulas, fishing nets, etc.
People are often required to perform repetitive tasks involving the lifting or manipulating of handled devices. For example in commercial kitchens, the preparation of fried food products or pasta requires repetitive movements of lifting, tilting, shaking, dumping the products out of the receptacle and replacing the receptacle to its original position. Repeated shaking of the receptacle may be desirable to remove excess oil. These repetitive motion tasks are performed daily in restaurants, institutional kitchens, and fast food establishments for cooking a variety of food products, such as French fries, fish, fried chicken, etc. The food products are usually placed in a basket before being towered in a fryer vat of hot oil or boiling water. The baskets usually have a handle for lifting the basket from the vat. The weight of empty or full baskets can place stress across hand and arm joints and supporting muscles, tendons, and ligaments.
Examples of handles for flyer baskets are described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,398,066 and D308,457. These handles have no ergonomic considerations and may put considerable strain on the user's anatomy. Some handles have a silicone type coating to the wire based handles to make them more comfortable to grip. However, they only consider contact stresses and do nothing to distribute stresses more optimally across hand and arm. Nor do they help orient the hand and arm in a more optimal arrangement for minimizing stress on the anatomy.
Repetitive movements involving the use of receptacles may also occur in other settings, such as the handling of fish with fishing nets or painters using paint rollers.
Job tasks that involve highly repetitive grasping and manipulating activities or specific wrist postures involving heavy lifting are associated with medical conditions, such as Carpal Tunnel Syndrome whereby the median nerve is compressed at the wrist leading to numbness and muscle weakness in the hand. Other conditions that are associated with repetitive motions of the wrist include tennis elbow, De Quervain's syndrome, extensor or flexor tendinitis, and contact stresses on hand and fingers. Additionally, any forceful and repetitive use of the hands and wrists can cause upper extremity pain.
Accordingly there is a need for an ergonomic anatomical assist system that assists a person in lifting and manipulating a handled receptacle device and that more optimally distributes stress across the user's anatomy and/or more optimally orients the anatomy.